Strange confluence of abortion links this morning. MetaFilter links to this moving and sad story about a religious woman who could not bring herself to abort a son that would be born without a brain, not even to save the other, healthy twin. (She got lucky; the other twin was apparently born without complication.) Linkfilter links to a story of a woman who was aborted but survived.

On the more pro-choice side of things, Linkfilter also links to Martin Avery's "Confessions of an Abortionist" essay at infidels.org:

It was a case of the blind going to the blind. I was horrified and told her that, of course, I could not perform an abortion. I had heard about some of the drastic medicines given in such cases and I warned her against them. I told her that I could go to prison for doing what she wanted, and I was against such things personally. I probably sounded fierce, for I was afraid someone would find out that she'd been to me with such a request, and I feared even that would get me into trouble.

She left me a great deal more frightened than when she arrived. I had told her that no decent doctor would perform an abortion. And I had scared her pretty badly about using any home devices. Also I'd added a little homily on her 'sins. I should have been shot, but I felt righteous about the whole business. She had some money. She'd been teaching school and saved several hundred dollars and she offered me the whole sum if I would get her out of the jam. I needed the money, but I felt a virtuous glow over turning it down. I was living up to medical ethics. I was being a good citizen and an honorable physician.

So she went away, and I settled back in my empty office and read medical journals and old magazines and treated a few persons who came in with colds and indigestion.

The next day her name leaped at me from the front page of the daily newspaper. Her body had been found on the doorstep of her home, at one o'clock that morning, by her brother as he was returning from a dance. She had shot herself, and she died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.